Best Year for Pop Music

This conversation started yesterday, with some offering 1967 as the classic year.

Eh.

In 1967, the Beatles had come into their own, but the Stones were still a year away from hitting their stride, the Who sounded weird and tinny, and Led Zeppelin didn’t exist. The Kinks were just beginning to get good.

How about 1975? “Physical Graffiti,” “Wish You Were Here,” “Who By Numbers,” two albums by the Kinks — “Schoolboys in Disgrace” and “Soap Opera” — and Dylan’s “Blood On the Tracks.” The beginnings of disco, with some nice stuff by the BeeGees. “Young Americans.” Elton John’s “Captain Fantastic.” Stevie Wonder singing “Boogie on reggae woman.” Plus, the emergence of the Eagles (eh), Linda Ronstadt and Springsteen.

Or how about 1973: “Quadrophenia,” “Houses of the Holy,” Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” “Band On the Run,” “Mind Games,” “Living in the Material World,” “Innervisions,” Bowie, “Dark Side of the Moon.”

Or how about 1978: “Saturday Night Fever” sound track, the best year for disco and Donna Summer, “Who Are You,” good albums by the Ramones, Blondie, the Runaways “Live in Japan,” “Cheap Trick Live” — lots of excitement about the emergence of New Wave, the emergence in the USA of the Sex Pistols, “Misfits,” the Cars’ first album, Patti Smith’s “Easter.”

You could say much the same for 1979: The apotheosis of New Wave. “Candy-0,” “Eat to the Beat,” the last fun disco stuff (“Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” “Knock On Wood,” “Hot Stuff”).

Anyway. Take your pick, but I don’t think the best year was in the ’60s. I was some year in the seventies.

Or the nineties or aughts, for all I know — because I know very little about the pop music of either, except for the big rap acts, including every recording of Eminem known to man.